Getting their money's worth

My mom warned me before I ever started subbing that some principals are super picky about making sure their subs stay all the way until the end of the day, even if they are doing NOTHING. I was very careful about that at first, but after spending some time at the same schools, which were happy to allow me to leave as soon as I was finished, I relaxed and accidently got myself in trouble.

Well, in trouble might be a little strong. At a school I subbed at a few weeks ago, the bell rang, I cleaned up the room, finished up my notes, and headed to the office to check out. I thought I'd spent a fair amount of after school time to make it seems as if I was doing stuff, so I'd only be leaving a few minutes early, but because this particular teacher's schedule had two free periods at the end of the day, I judged wrong. I arrived down at the office a full 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave and was told that I was supposed to stay until 3:45. She ended up having me stand outside (in the cold and rain) until 3:45 or the rest of the students were gone, whichever came first.

This annoys me.

I get it, you're paying me for 8 hrs, you want me to work for 8 hours. But the pure stupidity of having a person sit on their ass and do nothing (or alternatively read a novel) is ridiculous. I see it more like you are paying me to do the job of subbing for this teacher, the hours aren't the deal, it's the job. Do the job, get the pay. This is especially silly because in this situation I had already asked if the library needed help, I had asked the office and they had nothing except supervising space that was already supervised. If I'm an actual teacher who has actual planning and meetings and other things to use for that time, that is logical. A teacher who leaves early every day should be making the time up some other time. But as a substitute, there is nothing I Can do to help the teacher I'm covering for. In fact, even organizing or cleaning or grading, which might initially appear to be helpful tasks, might actually create more work for the teacher. I know that I wouldn't want a sub that I didn't know to do any of that for me, I want to look at my own students work, and do my own organizing.

Yes, the school deserves a full day of my time, but if you're going to make me stay after the work for my teacher is done, they better have something for me to do.

This is my opinion, what do you guys think, am I being reasonable? Is it ridiculous or commonplace for a school to expect me to sit and do nothing in my classroom instead of go home when I'm done.

Does a sub get paid for doing the job, or working the hours?

Things I've learned

After a few months of subbing all over the place i have learned two things that are absolutely HUGE to me.

1. Students are dismissed when I dismiss them. In my classroom students will work until the bell rings, when the bell rings, they will sit quietly until I dismiss them. Period. I don't want students controlling when they leave my classroom, this is a privileged that can be saved for college. Having me dismiss students isn't JUST about power, it also allows me to dispense any last minute reminders or announcements, and make changes to information that I've perhaps given out later.

2. No lining up at the door. In the event that I do ask students to clean up before the bell rings, they will not line up at the door, they will sit in their seats (unless it's the end of the day and I have to put chairs up, in which case they would stand behind their chair), and then they may leave when I dismiss them. When students start crowding up by the door it limits my ability to make any last minute announcements and encourages stampeding.

It's this sort of management stuff that I find I am learning what works, and what's my style every day I enter a new classroom.

Things have been brewing... an anecdote!

I've been jotting down blog topics for a couple weeks and haven't found time to type them, so I apologies for the quickness of these posts.


The Friday before school started back up after the new year I went out for a friends birthday to a bar, I ordered a drink and some food and wasn't carded. This isn't terribly surprising, though I did notice. I'm 24 and tend to look/seem fairly mature (or so I thought).

What was weird, was Monday morning I subbed at a school I hadn't been at much. I woke up late, and didn't have time to pack a lunch so I was stuck eating school lunch, not the end of the world. I finished eating up in the staff room and headed down to the cafeteria to return my tray. As I was leaving, one of the aids approached me and said "Are you a new student?"

This was at a middle school, yes at age 24 I was mistaken for a 6th, 17th or 8th grader, within DAYS of not being carded at a bar.

Apparently I defy recognition by looking both over 26 and under 14 at the same time!

Well, I didn't get a job.

Despite the fact that I had several promising and engaging interviews I was not hired for the 2009/2010 school year. Fortunately, in the line of work of teaching, not getting a job doesn't banish you to the world of part time service or food industry jobs, no you have the opportunity to substitute teach. For some a way of life, for other their greatest fear, right?

I signed up with all the local districts, I printed business cards and spent the week before school started driving around to different schools where I had an 'in'. And then, when school started, I waited. And just when I was starting to get discouraged (and really worried about where October's rent was going to come from) I started to get calls. Since that first call, today is the first school day that I haven't had to sub somewhere. I have worked in 7 different schools, with ages from pre-school to seniors in high school. I've taught music (quite a lot actually), art, science, math, English... and I have learned more about my values and classroom management as a teacher then I had in a full term of student teaching last spring.

Walking into a classroom and commanding control and respect and accomplishing the goals that the teacher has set down for you is a very rewarding challenge. Thus far I seem to have been fairly successful and have gotten positive feedback from the teachers I've subbed for. Most of the time I've enjoyed what I've been doing, being in different classrooms, schools and with different age groups. I've also really enjoyed the fact that when the school day ends, I clean up and go home. No planning for the next day, no grading, no worrying about how I'll make up for lost time or take care of an issue, or anything like that.

The one aspect of subbing that I don't like is it prevents me from doing much planning in my own life. For the most part, I won't know more then one or two days ahead of time if I am going to be working on a certain day, so I can't make plans for my own life, or plans with friends. Since I am normally such a planner, this leaves me floundering a little when I wake up in the morning and there aren't any calls for the day. But somehow I think I'll manage.

Long busy day

Today was the first day of my classes, and I anticipated a bit more stress then usual. Today was particularly unique, however, because Mrs. Keener was unexpectedly sick. She came in long enough to leave a lesson for me and the sub, but that was it. She was gone by the time I got there at 9:30. I also didn't realize that she was not in the building until the sub walked in, five minutes before the kids arrived. I figured she was at a meeting, or off in another part of the bulding taking care of something. When the sub suggested that I teach the lesson, since I probably under stood the math better then he did, I readily consented, but I didn't even get to fully read the lesson plan before it was time to start! Talk about teaching on the fly. I made up a warm-up off the top of my head, with a little input from students as to what they wanted to practice, and set about teaching the lesson on using rectangular arrays to factor. Fortunately this is something which I am pretty familiar with, so the lesson was no problem. Although I originally made the mistake of handing out the square 'chips' before I went over the worksheet, so a lot of kids lost out on the instruction because they were playing with the manipulatives. I did that differently when I taught it in the afternoon. Kids also were having a hard time interpreting the analysis questions on the back (heck, some of those questions were complicated for me!) so I am concerned that they will be unable to complete it by tomorrow. I think I did pretty well with the teaching considering the total lack of preperation. The kids like me and respect me, and follow my directions pretty well. Being at a middle school, I am clearly 'one of them' to the kids. They don't identify with me as a young person, they identify with me as an adult, although I'm sure they recognize that I am younger then Mrs. Keener. Especially some of the more 'problematic' boys seem to have taken to me. I'm not sure what it is about that. If it's the fact that I take the time to give them some appropriate attention, if it's that I laugh at their jokes (when it's the appropriate time and the jokes are good) or what. But three boys in particular who give Mrs. Keener (and their other core teacher) a lot of trouble, behave pretty well for me, though they do need reminding from time to time. Perhaps I'm just new and exciting? One particularly good lesson for today is that I need to pay more attention to time when I am teaching. I accidently spent nearly half of math on the warm-up, and the science lesson took way longer then Mrs. Keener had indicated it should have. Although when the sub taught science, in the afternoon, it took them the same amount of time it took me.

Mrs. Keener has told me, and other teachers have confirmed this, that one of my strongest traits as a pre-service teacher is my confidence. Someone asks me if I can do something, and my response is nearly always "sure, no problem". I hope that this confidence I have doesn't balloon into over-confidence though. I would hate to get in over my head.

I had one other really interesting interaction today. We were working in groups on math and one boy came up to me with two questions. He's a kid who is pretty quiet and is often sort of zoning out. His first question had to do with the requirements for a science project that is due on Wednesday. The second question totally took me by surprise. He asked, " If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" A very analytical question from a person who I hadn't given enough credit! ( Not to mention compleatly off topic, and having nothing to do with anything we were doing in class, science or otherwise). I took a second, and told him about a story I'd heard about butterflys changing their spots to match thier environment when a factory producing lots of ash was built in their habitat, while the butterflys of the same speciies that didn't live near the factory didn't develop spots. I don't remember where i heard this anecdote, but it's always stuck with me. So, I explained, perhaps the monkeys that are still monkeys didn't have something making an evolution necessary. I wish I'd come up with something better, evolution isn't something I am terribly familiar with. My knoweldge steming a little from Freshman biology, and a little from the book Sophie's World, where they touch on it from a philosophical point of view.

All in all a full day. I can't wait to see what the rest of the week has in store. We are going to 'sky camp' on Thursday to do some team building. Sounds exciting!

Falling into a routine

After the first few days I spent less time doing formal observations and more time falling into a role in the day to day culture of the classroom. I arrive near the end of Mrs. Keener's prep and grade papers and help brainstorm and prepare for class. I observe and answer questions, offereing help during the core period and flex. Eating lunch with Mrs. Keener and the other sixth grade teachers is always a pleasure, and then after lunch I work on my school improvement project and observe the pm group.

The school improvement project is going remarkably well and I'm having a great time working on it. Since the kids arrived Melissa and I haven't had much time to work on it together, but as of Monday this week the base for the big time line is up. We finished the small ones right when school was starting and I assume the kids are starting to use those by now. I've nearly put in my 30 hours for the SIP already and we are nearly done with the time line so it looks like the work has been well laid out. It was really fun to do the research for the dates, and a GREAT refresher of my World History. Useful I'm sure for whenever I get around to attempting the Social Studies Praxis test. Melissa and I anticipate finishing the timeline either at the end of this week or early next week, which is great because then we are done with the SIP for fall!

Some other observations and reflections I've come up with over the past week or two:

Mrs. Keener has a very specific way she wants kids to do their notes, she has them fold the paper in half and take notes in columns. I don't know if i like that much dication as to how they make their notes. On the one hand, sixth graders don't necessarily have the study skills to make organized notes themselves, but I know that I would be annoyed if I was forced to take notes in a skinny column like that. At first when I heard her say this I thought it was sort of ridiculous, but after grading a set of their warm up, and seeing their handwritting and organization skills, I think that having some level of structure for note taking is a must, columns or no columns.

I had the pleasure of observing a sub on September 11th. Mr. DelMarter is a retired teacher who was subbing for Mr. Smith (6th grade math/science). He began class sitting in a chair at the front of the room talking about himself and his family. He had the kids absolutely mezmerised! He told them about his grand kids, and their names, and then would ask how many grandkids he had, to test if they were paying attention. He's been teaching for 45 years, which is amazing.
He pulled out a tootsie roll pop while he was talking and slipped in a comment about how he gives hundreds of them out. Now the kids are really paying attention because they want to know how they can get a lollipop. As he's telling his stories he looks right at one student, and speaks as if he's telling the story only to him, occassionaly he chaged his focus. He totally impressed kids by having memorized several of their names right off the bat, and making little jokes about them. His whole lesson revolved around the tootsie roll pops. He told them they could eat them in class, if they made sure to take the paper off first. He voice is low and rich, and he speaks very slowly. He tells the kids that if they Vice Principle comes in, they have to hide the lollipops, and the signal is a single snap. Then they must stick their hands under their arms, crossing them, thus hiding the lollipop in the arm pit. They practice. He reminds them they must refrain from drooling. Two snaps means they must wave their lollipops in the air, in hopes of capturing germs from a sneeze so that they may stay home from school. Three snaps means they trade with their neighbor, four snaps means that one lucky kid passes around his sucker so that all the kids can get a taste. As he lays out these ridiculous instructions the kids giggle, but are totally engaged and consumed by watching Mr. DelMarter. I was pretty engaged myself and couldn't help but smile and enjoy the show. His style thrives on individual attention, and a superb storytelling skill. He tells about how forty years ago the neighborhood was different. I don't know how he did it, or what he did but his ability to control and engage those students was magical. They only barely got to doing any math, but he has those students undivided attention and respect. Later in the day he came into Mrs. Keeners room briefly to say hi. Mrs. Keeners kids are relativly well behaved, but she has a fairly active and somewhat chaotic classroom when direct instruction isn't going on. Lunch had just finished and kids were all over the place. Mr.DelMarter started talking and all that changed. They paid attention. They told the students how lucky they were to have Mrs. Keener and that they needed to show her proper respect. He sent Mrs. Keener out of the room and within seconds has all the students silent sitting quietly in their desks with their hands folded, and when Mrs. Keener returned they chimed "Good morning Mrs. Keener, how are you today?" And then the spell was broken as Mr. DelMarter left the room and returned the class to Mrs. Keener. As I said, I don't know how he did it, maybe it's magic ;-D

One thing I've begun to notice about Mrs. Keener's style is that she is very relaxed and allows a lot of leeway in her classroom. There is lots of discussion in which it is acceptable to call out and make off topic comments. So far it hasn't been a problem and Mrs. Keener is excellent at reining things in when they start to get out of hand, though I don't know if I could do it so well. One concern is that I notice that when the class is having a discussion of this nature there are usually several kids who chose to check out and aren't participating, but are rather just staring off into space.

I have more I could type, but these entries don't need to be novels. Look soon for an entry on a Free Time lesson. Such a thing had never occured to me, but I think is an awesome idea for Middle School aged kids.